Changing times bring exciting opportunities: TSBE

Tara Miko
Reporter
Tara started with APN in 2010 after graduating with a journalism and politics degree from Griffith University in Brisbane. After two-and-a-half years working on APN papers in the Bowen Basin in Central Queensland, she joined the team at The Chronicle in February 2013. In September that year she took over the reins of the Rural Weekly.

THE Darling Downs region is poised for exponential growth, much of which rests on the success of an historic Toowoomba to China trade delegation that starts tomorrow.

Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise's AccessChina'16 delegation, which embarks from Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport at 10.30am tomorrow, will make history and could potentially transform the region.

The first international passenger flight marks an historic milestone for Toowoomba, but also the 200 plus passengers on board the A330 who are seeking to seize the Asian opportunity.

For AccessChina'16 project leader and Food Leaders Australia CEO Ben Lyons, it's a milestone he knew would happen, just perhaps not that quickly.

It was inevitable, though - the lobby group spearheading the nation's biggest and richest agricultural regions backed by a burgeoning resources sector driven by some of the brightest producers and operators in Australia.

"It's pretty ambitious," Dr Lyons said.

"We're trying to match the ambition and the theme of the airport, what it has done to the region.

"It has injected a lot of confidence here and I think we have to build on that confidence and not let it die.

"There's also a new generation of growers and they want to have more say.

"They don't want to be only reactive, they want to have more say on how the transaction happens."

The modern producer, he said, wanted to investigate the new and previously untapped, and that included international markets.

There hasn't always been that readiness to enter Asia, however, with a recent Pricewaterhouse Coopers study finding the majority of profiled producers considering trade with China too difficult.

Topping the reasons why was cultural barriers, followed closely by their willingness to deal with, and adapt to, change.

The AccessChina'16 delegation seeks to address just that, giving more than 200 business operators across the represented sectors a sort of cultural-immersion crash course.

For the man who lived in Shanghai for decades, it's a chance to show how easy it can be to enter the Chinese market.